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Wood-based waste left from the goods production made of furniture boards is the main waste type of modern carpentry workshops. It is a waste classified as hazardous and subject to restrictive disposal regulations. One way to utilize it is to burn it in specially adapted furnaces. To this end, it is necessary to shred the waste to facilitate technological processes of combustion, transport and storage. In order to design effective shredding machines dedicated to shredding wood-based waste, information about the mechanical properties of materials subjected to shredding is necessary. A number of mechanical properties of chipboards (with and without laminate), oriented strand boards (OSB) and medium-density fibreboards (MDF) in the aspect of shredding process have been experimentally determined in the article. The influence of material type, blade geometries and cutting depth on cutting force and elasticity coefficient were analysed. Blade geometries reflect different phases of rotation of the cylindrical wood chipper’s knife. It has been shown that a knife with the most favourable geometry (k₃) is characterized by the lowest values of the stiffness coefficient for each of the materials. This is the geometry of the cylindrical wood chipper’s knife exactly halfway into the cutting process. Whereas the least favourable geometry (k₃) is characterized by a knife corresponding to the beginning of the cutting process. Among the tested materials, the MDF board requires the most energy to change its structure, and the laminated chipboard requires the least. The presented results can be a set of input data necessary to model the work required to implement the cutting process, but also enable validation of existing cutting models.